(Save your direct responses to me for the post at John K's blog; feel
free to comment about the situation itself here)
John K
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/
is promoting a showdown...
"EXCITING SHOWDOWN NEXT WEEK!
Be sure to be here to find out who should write cartoons. Cartoonists?
Or people who don't know how cartoons work? Who is more qualified?
It's a debate between Ted and a famous cartoonist (not me). And you will
be the judges and jury...don't miss it!"
The Ted is me...
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/12/yogi-bear-pie-pirates-1958-frank.html
"JohnK said...
Ted, your post is too good to waste in the comments section where it
might be missed.
I'm gonna give you your own post, so every cartoonist who has had to
draw a storyboard from a script written by a non cartoonist can respond.
I already have a very well respected animator who will share the
post with you.
Thanks for the perfect topic to bounce off of!
8:56 AM "
Here's my comment; it was not added to the comments. You can get a look
at it ahead of time, in its original form...
"You don't really explain why you think only cartoonists should write
cartoons. You just say you are convinced of it (and that you convinced
Nickelodeon of it; are you going to say if someone can convince Nick
something is the case, then it must be the case?)and make analogies that
are not so clear cut (the church, government and private clients
generally wrote what classical and renaissance sculpture or paintings
would be, often to the point of saying "make it like this other Madonna"
or similar, and dance is often written storywise by non-dance sources;
see, for example, The Lion King, or Cats). The artists executed the
final product through their own artistic lens, and added incalculably to
the work, but it's wrong to say they were the sole writers.
You also don't address other, more similar artforms, where it is not the
case; live action films and television are almost certainly the most
analagous artform to cartoons in terms of story structure, and yet
people are not up in arms when a movie isn't written by a
cinematographer, set dresser, or director.
So, why is a cartoonist the only person equipped to create (or lift) a
story structure? Why is a cartoonist the only person who can write a
line of dialogue like "cling tenaciously to my buttocks"? Or a line like
"You're next! Meeester Doggie Treeeeat !"? If cartoonists are so
important to the process, why are the two specific examples of
cartoonist added content lines of dialogue? Why are cartoonists uniquely
qualified to take someone else's story and swap in new wackier elements?
Why are cartoonists uniquely qualified to watch old cartoons, glean what
works about the story structure, and regurgitate it in new and
interesting ways?
There's a big difference between saying "some cartoonists can write
great cartoons or add great story or dialogue bits to cartoons", which
your comments support, and "only cartoonists should write cartoons". A
cartoonist might have all the technical skills to be able to make a
cartoon from story to embellished drawings by herself and a
non-cartoonist cannot make a cartoon by herself because by that
definition they are lacking the technical drawing skill sets of the
cartoonist. How is your assertion that a non cartoonist cannot have the
technical skill to write a cartoon story structure or dialogue any
different from the assertion of a broken studio system that says
cartoonists cannot have the technical skill to write a cartoon? "
Note that John K simply assumes someone who isn't a cartoonist doesn't
know how a cartoon works, which makes his pimping up top a
mischaracterization of my position; I don't think people who don't
understand cartoons should necessarily write them (altho it's
theoretically possible someone who doesn't "understand" cartoons could
be free to make a completely new and great kind of cartoon story), but I
do think people who aren't cartoonists can understand how cartoons work.
He's also characterizing my statements as meaning I think
non-cartoonists are more qualified than cartoonists to write cartoons;
my statements do not imply that, altho I do believe there can be
individuals who are not cartoonists who may be better at writing
cartoons than some/many/most cartoonists.
I can only hope he'll actually answer the questions I asked; even if
Famous Cartoonist X answers all the questions, it doesn't mean that's
what John K's answer would have been.
Below is the text of the John K post (link above) that my comment was
responding to:
"Thursday, February 15, 2007
Yogi Bear "Pie Pirates", 1958, Frank Tipper, Yard To Far, Bob Camp and
friends, Story Structure
Boo Boo had a different voice in the first cartoon. It was nasally.
Watch Boo Boo with a cold....
huckleberry pie
Uploaded by chuckchillout 8
During the summer break between season 1 and 2 of Ren and Stimpy , I
asked the Nickelodeon folks to let me keep my key artists on so I could
have some training classes to improve all our skills, so that we could
up the quality for the second season. To my amazement, they agreed!
One of the classes I had was on Story Structure. I firmly believed that
cartoonists should write cartoons and had convinced Nickelodeon of it.
Not every cartoonist can write of course, but only cartoonists should
write cartoons - just as only dancers can "write" (choreograph) dances,
musicians can write music and sculptors can "write" sculptures.
I had a few cartoonists who were really funny, and those were the ones
that had written the first season of Ren and Stimpy , because they
could come up with a lot of gags. I found, though that I ended up having
to structure all the stories, making them make sense, making them
build, making the characters seem motivated and writing the dialogue so
it seemed like each character spoke in his own style.
Some of the funniest cartoonists at the first Spumco were Bob Camp,
Jim Smith, Jim Gomez, Vincent Waller and Rich Pursel . That was my main
writing team, but almost every other artist contributed gags and ideas
all through the production (almost all cartoonists are funny and I never
turn down a good gag if it's in character), and now and then I would
let an artist from another department do storyboards. BG painter Bill
Wray did the board for Powdered Toastman and added lots of gags that
weren't in the outline; "Cling tenaciously to my buttocks!" made me
fall on the floor laughing. Chris Reccardi killed me with "You're next!
Meeester Doggie Treeeeat !" in Man's Best Friend.
So even though you might have raw story and gag talent, you still need
to know the skills of writing. Some are general, and some are specific
to cartoons. Sometimes my writers would have Stimpy do things that were
more suited to Ren , or the dialogue would seem just expositional , or
the gags would not build, they would put the best gag first and follow
with weaker gags of the same kind, etc...so I wanted to develop
everyone's technical writing skills.
During the first class I held on story structure, I picked a cartoon to
screen that was very simple and direct. It was the first Yogi Bear
cartoon: Pie Pirates. I made everyone watch it and then write a story
outline of what the point of the story was, what the characters'
motivations were, what their personalities were and then to list each
story point and gag in order.
IMPORTANT POINT: I didn't choose this cartoon because it was the
funniest cartoon in the world or had the greatest animation. I chose it
specifically because it was so simple that it was easy to analyze. The
story is clear and doesn't have random twists and turns. All the gags
are true to the premise of the cartoon and they build. Period.
I believe when you are learning anything, you should start with
learning the simplest fundamental steps. If you want to dance, you
don't start by studying Fred Astaire. You study Bill Robinson with a
teacher who can break down his steps for you.
That's why I recommend Preston Blair to everyone who wants to draw
cartoons. It has the same fundamentals that Bambi or Sleeping Beauty
has, but they are easier to see in simple characters. You can't learn
to animate by starting on a walk cycle using Aurora's design! (I know
this from direct experience!)
"Pie Pirates" (1958)
The story was about a big conniving, lazy but lovable bear and his
nervous goody goody sidekick who are hungry.
They smell a freshly baked pie,look over a fence and see it cooling on a
window ledge. Yogi wants to steal it, Boo Boo thinks it's a bad idea,
but goes along with it.
The only problem is, there is a big mean guard dog in the yard and Yogi
will have to get past the dog to get the pie, and most of the gags are
about Yogi trying to outwit the dog to get to the pie. A typical
situational short cartoon premise with an easy motivation that you can
build gags on.
"A Yard Too Far" (1993)
After everyone wrote up their outlines, I think I then asked them to
come up with a simple structure of their own. I actually don't remember.
I do remember this whole exercise studying a Yogi Bear cartoon tortured
Eddie!
At a story session later, we were talking about Pie Pirates and I said,
"Let's take the plot of Pie Pirates and just replace all the elements
but leave the same structure!"
We replaced Yogi and Boo Boo with Ren and Stimpy .
We replaced the pie with a plate of steaming hog jowls.
The bulldog was replaced by a baboon in the yard.
Bob Camp did hilarious drawings of the baboon!
Bob Camp did the storyboard and this was a cartoon at Spumco , but it
got produced at "Games" the first version of the Nickelodeon studio.
Here are more images from Pie Pirates.
I think we left this guy out.
It's a very limited animation cartoon-not even any inbetweens ! But it's
animated by Mike Lah and looks very Tex Avery- ish . Mike was an
animator for Tex at MGM and when Tex left, he became the director for
his unit. I don't mind limited animation if it has good posing, and I
have a special affection for this cartoon. I love the rings around
Yogi's eyes too! "
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